


Beyond

by laallomri



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 18:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5636491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laallomri/pseuds/laallomri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Belle discovers much more than this provincial life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond

Belle grew restless in the weeks following her daughter’s birth. There was something both profound and provincial in the tiny human that relied so completely upon her; something both maternal and maddening. She had wanted more than a provincial life, hadn’t she? Yet there she was, three years resident in the same castle, speaking to the same people, wearing the same clothes, sitting on the same chair, eating at the same table. 

She told Adam one evening before bed. He was sprawled on the sofa, exhausted from a day of wearing a crown as heavy as their child, and at first she was unsure he even heard her.

“Adam? Are you awake?”

He started. “Hm? What? Sorry. Say that last part again.”

Belle sighed. “I want to travel,” she said earnestly. “There is so much of the world I have yet to see.”

He sat up. The candlelight did not quite reach him; his face was cast in shadow, impassive.

She held her breath. She thought of him eating alone, of the baby sleeping soundly in the next room, of the rumours that would no doubt follow her departure.

“I only hope,” he said finally, “that I can manage to learn to rock Marie to sleep while you are gone. It would be mortifying to always have to call in the nurse.” He rose and stretched. “Shall I help you pack? Or would you rather wait until tomorrow morning?”

.^.

Adam gave her enough money to fund a small army.

“I don’t need all this,” she protested.

“Yes, you do,” he said firmly. “Don’t come back until you’ve spent all of it. No, scratch that—don’t come back until you’ve had to write me twice to ask for more.” 

“I’ll write you for other reasons than that!”

“Oh, of course you will,” he said wryly. “But always there’ll be that little postscript, mentioning how very nice it would be to have just a teensy bit more…”

She pinched him, and in the ensuing scuffle he trapped her in his arms to kiss her.

“Last one for a long time,” he said, and despite his cheerful tone she saw the effort in his eyes.

“I’ll write every week,” she promised. “And I’ll send presents for Marie.” She broke away, turned to mount her horse, then stopped. “Are you certain you cannot come as well?”

“The people have been without a prince for so long,” he said, as she knew he would. “I cannot leave them again.” He shrugged. “But who knows? Perhaps you will be walking in a bazaar in some far off place, and suddenly see a dunce of a man bumbling along and confusing his tu with his tum, and there I’ll be.”

She laughed and mounted her horse. He took her hand, kissed it. The nurse handed him Marie, and he lifted her up gently so Belle could kiss her forehead.

“Good-bye, little one,” she murmured. “I shall have much to tell you when I next see you.”

She returned Marie to her nurse, waved to her husband, then leaned down to speak in Philip’s ear.

“Onward, my friend,” she whispered, the thrill of adventure already overtaking the sadness of leaving her family behind. “By the time we are finished a beast in a castle will seem as ordinary as a bear in his cave.”

.^.

The salt in the air stung, made her skin prickle and her eyes squint, but she loved it as much as the sharp air of the forest. The forest air was fresh, swift; but the ocean air was sly, biting, drew her in and pushed her away all at once.

She unlaced her boots and walked barefoot in the shifting sand, delighting in the way it squished between her toes. She approached the ocean, watched the waves overtake her ankles.

“Hello!”

Belle looked up and—somehow—a winter of living in a castle with sentient household objects was not enough to prepare her for the sight before her.

The woman—or fish? For she twisted in the water as she spoke, and Belle saw that where she ought to have legs there was nothing but a long tail—beamed as brightly as the scales patterning her lower half and said something else.

“Je ne peux pas vous comprendre,” Belle said apologetically. “Je ne parle pas la langue de ce pays.”

“Oh!” The mermaid scrunched up her nose. “Er…vous parlez français?”

Belle nodded and the mermaid continued in comprehensible, chatty French.

“I learned from my aunt,” she explained. “She swam away to the south of France to marry a merman my grandfather didn’t approve of. So my cousins mostly speak French.”

“I see,” Belle said politely.

“My name’s Aquata,” the mermaid said. “Who’re you?”

“Belle.”

“That’s a pretty name! It suits you. You’re human, aren’t you? My sister’s human, too. She rubs it in our faces all the time.” Aquata sighed. “Well, not on purpose. Not really. But I don’t think she has to run along the beach so very often. Do you?”

“It does seem rather unnecessary,” Belle conceded.

“Or prattle on about how fast Melody is learning to walk,” Aquata continued, rolling her eyes. “Every time she comes to visit she’s like”—Aquata’s voice turned sing-songy—“ ‘Little Melody stood up all by herself today! Little Melody walked all the way across the room with Eric’s help this morning! Little Melody ran a half-marathon this afternoon!’”

Belle hid a smile. “You aren’t close to your sister, then?”

“No, I am, it’s just…” Aquata sighed again. “You know, you expect to see less of your sisters after they marry. After all, they might swim all the way to France, like my aunt! But it’s different like this. She’s not just far physically. She’s far in everything. When we meet we can’t talk about stuff anymore. What do we have in common? Her daughter walks. My daughter swims. Her daughter has fish for dinner. My daughter has fish for dinner, too—but, you know, like, has them over for dinner, not eats them.” She shuddered. “Ugh. It’s so barbaric.”

Belle reflected on this for a moment.

“I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing,” she said finally. “It’s different, yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be close. You get to learn about humans this way. Learning is nice, isn’t it?”

“Ugh, don’t even start,” Aquata said, with another shudder. “School was a nightmare. I swear the schoolmistress had some sort of special vendetta against severely organized brunettes.”

Somewhere off in the distance—underwater, Belle could almost swear—a horn sounded.

“Oops, gotta go!” Aquata cried. “It was nice talking to you! G’bye!”

She flipped backwards and with a flash of fin was gone.

Belle stood in silence for a minute, wondering if perhaps she had dreamt the whole thing, when suddenly Aquata broke the surface again.

“Found this,” she said, holding out her hand. “I think it’d look nice ’round your neck.”

Belle took the scallop shell. It was smooth as the sand beneath her feet, shimmering pale pink in the fading sun.

“Thank you,” she said fervently. “It’s beautiful. It’s very kind of you to offer it to me.”

“Nah,” Aquata said modestly. “You aren’t as bad a human as most are. You stood in place the whole time!”

And with that she descended into the depths once more.

.^.

The farther east Belle travelled, the more difficult it was to find a common language. She knew three well, and two more passably, but as she pushed onwards she found recourse to what little a book could teach her in such a short time, and—when all else failed—plenty of hand gestures and quick sketches.

In fact, when she entered the land where the people hid their hair and the script itself looked like a quick sketch, she managed to have an entire conversation entirely in hand gestures and drawings.

It was at a coffee house. The busy hour forced her to share a table with an elderly man, so old his skin looked almost blue in the dim light.

He said something to her, perhaps a comment on the crowdedness of the establishment. Belle smiled apologetically and haltingly said the only full phrase she spoke in his language.

His eyes opened. “Ah!” He thought for a moment, then asked tentatively. “Hindi?”

She shook her head. “Français.”

He shrugged. They sat sipping their coffee in silence for a minute or two, and then, out of nowhere, he produced a sheet of paper and a bit of charcoal. He grinned, pointed at her, then drew a rough outline of the continent and held out a hand, palm up.

Who are you? Where do you come from?

Belle added her own continent to the west of his, then outlined France. She drew a tiny stick figure of herself, with a crown.

The man said something—it sounded like he was impressed—then bowed his head to her, one cupped hand greeting her as though she were a sultana. “Salaam!”

She laughed and shook her head. She drew herself again, this time beside her father’s cottage, tending to a chicken and a cow. Then the prince, with his crown and castle.

The man nodded, then took the charcoal and drew another stick figure. He pointed to the outline of his country, then to the stick figure, to whom he added a crown, then to her.

Our sultan is like you.

And then—astonishingly, the man proceeded to make all manner of drawings, drawings that seemed to move all on their own in the hazy light of the coffeehouse. She saw a boy thief with a monkey, a lonely princess with a tiger, a flying carpet and a friendly djinn. She saw the boy’s grand entrance as a prince, the vizier’s growing power, the final battle between both. 

She looked at the man with wide eyes. He smiled, then pulled out a tiny fragment of gold from within his cloak.

He pointed to the drawing of the lamp, then held out the fragment. Belle took it, her brow furrowed. The man tapped the paper and the lamp in the drawing shattered.

Belle looked down at the fragment in her hand. She turned it over, rubbed it with her sleeve, turned it again.

When she looked up, the man had vanished, and all that sat in the seat before her was a wisp of blue smoke.

.^.

Belle pressed farther east, so far east she learned that language could be read not just horizontally, but vertically as well. And here she found, to her astonishment, an old man who spoke her native tongue.

“I visited France one time,” he said enthusiastically over supper at his house. Chien Po was a large man, so tall he had to stoop to enter rooms and so round his eyes disappeared when he smiled. “I am a great lover of food. I travelled very far to try delicacies from all lands. France has some of the best food in that part of the world.”

“Oh, yes,” Belle sighed. “I miss it sometimes. Travel is wonderful, but once in a while you want something from home.”

“You will like what we have,” he assured her. “My wife is the best cook in all the land.”

He repeated the phrase in his tongue for his wife, a tiny old woman who was as round as he was. The latter giggled and said something in response.

“She is—how do you say?—she says I am lying.”

“She’s modest,” Belle supplied.

He beamed. “Yes! My wife is the best wife in all the land. Pretty and modest and the best cook. And smart!” he added after pausing to take a bite—or three. “She wanted to learn to read, but her baba said no. So after we married, I taught her. She learned very fast! She is the best reader in all the land.”

His admiration made Belle smile. “You are very fond of her.”

“Oh yes! She and Fa Mulan are tied for the best woman I have ever met.”

This revelation startled Belle. “Tied?”

“My wife is the best woman in all the land,” he said seriously, “but Fa Mulan is the best woman in all the world. She saved our country! She defeated the Huns, saved our friends, saved our emperor and our country!”

“Can you tell me about her?” Belle asked.

“Oh yes!” he agreed, and over the course of supper and the hours following, he told her of Fa Mulan’s adventures.

“May I meet her?” Belle asked eagerly as he finished. “It would be a great honour.”

Chien Po’s face fell.

“I am sorry,” he said quietly. “She left us five years ago. Her husband was very sad without her. He left us too, soon after her.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

There was a pause.

“How long will you stay?” Chien Po asked.

“I plan to leave tomorrow,” Belle replied. “I don’t know how much farther I have until the ocean, but I want to make it before I return home.”

“You will stay with us tonight,” he announced. “We have a spare room. You can sleep here, eat with us tomorrow, then leave.”

Belle agreed to this plan, and after another hour of listening to Fa Mulan’s later adventures, of her school that taught both combat and reading (no tea pouring or flower metaphors allowed) and her brief stint as an advisor to the emperor (evidently the advisor ousted to make room for her made such a fuss, and Fa Mulan missed her family so much, that she decided it would be best to return to teaching), Chien Po’s wife finally scolded him for keeping up their guest and sent them to bed.

The next morning, before Belle’s departure, Chien Po produced what looked like a fan.

“This is for you,” he said, smiling. “I talked to my wife. She agreed that I should give it to you. We are very old. All our friends have left us, and we think we will leave soon too. So we give this to you.”

Belle took the fan. She opened it—and drew in a sharp breath.

“This is her fan,” she said, turning it to see the side where the sword had caught, just above the wood of the handle. “Fa Mulan’s fan.”

Chien Po’s smile broadened. “You remember! This fan saved her life. This fan gave her the sword of Shan Yu. She gave it to her husband, and he gave it to our friends, and they gave it to us, and now we give it to you.” He looked at the fan almost reverently. “There is a great lesson in it. It reminds us to not assume something is weak just because it looks so.”

Belle folded the fan and placed it carefully inside her bag.

“Thank you very much,” she said. “I don’t know how to repay you both for your kindness.”

“Pray for us,” he said. “And pray our country still finds good food after my wife leaves.”

He repeated it for his wife, who swatted at his arm but giggled.

“I will,” Belle promised, grinning, “for both.” She turned to go. “Thank you both, again! It was so kind of you to invite me! Good-bye!”

She walked down the path, turned to wave, then opened the gate and went beyond.


End file.
